Pro-Life Attorney Applauds Illinois High Court's Decision
by Bill Fancher and Jim Brown
September 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Thanks to a major campaign by pro-life forces, the Illinois Supreme Court has reversed a decision that has locked up a parental notification law in that state for 11 years.The Illinois high court had refused to issue the rules that governed the law, which was passed in 1995. But pro-lifers managed to change that. Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of Chicago's Thomas More Society, explains that the make-up of the court was also a factor. "Six of the seven justices from 11 years ago have now moved on to other places on the planet," he says. "We've got six out of seven new justices, including a new chief justice -- Bob Thomas." Brejcha describes Thomas as "a very religious fellow."
With the new make-up, the court moved quickly, he says. "They took up the ball and ran with it -- and boom, boom, boom, they've written these new rules after telling everybody they were going to do it, and it took them just a day to write them after they said they would."
Brejcha says now that the new rules governing the law have been written, it is up to the state's pro-choice attorney general to remove an injunction that bottled-up the law because it had no rules. He expects that to happen soon.
Winning the Conservative Battles
No doubt Sam Brownback is pleased with developments similar to that in Illinois. The U.S. senator from Kansas is strongly pro-life -- and in fact, he predicts abortion itself will one day be outlawed in America.
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Senator Sam Brownback |
Describing the United States as "a majority pro-life nation," the Republican lawmaker says he believes conservatives are winning the cultural battle surrounding "life issues" such as abortion, cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, and euthanasia. Brownback shares that part of the reason he is so adamantly pro-life is his eight-year-old daughter Jenna, whom he adopted from Shantou City, China."I look at her often at night, and I wonder, 'You know, somebody who I've never met fought for her -- and she's alive and making straight A's and a brilliant, beautiful girl because somebody fought for her,'" says Brownback. "It would have been easier to abort her, but they fought for her. And I hope we never forget about that -- that that's what we fight for in life. We fight for them."
Brownback says he is convinced conservatives will win that fight -- and that Roe v. Wade will ultimately be overturned. Another fight in which he predicts a win for the conservative cause is against what he calls the "vast social experiment to redefine marriage."
The Republican leader points out that in countries where same-sex "marriage" is permitted, the consequences to date have not been good. Those countries, he says, have seen abrupt declines in the number of heterosexual marriages as well as sharp increases in the number of children born out of wedlock.
"In some [areas] in Norway, as high as 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock," he notes. "You can say -- 'Well, that's just the way it is.' [But] the problem is [if] you put a child in that situation, the likelihood of their getting a good education, their not being involved in crime, or their being abused -- all of those indicators move in the wrong direction as a society."
Brownback says the best place to raise a child is between a man and woman "bonded together for life."
